Response to The Future of Interaction Design

In “A brief Rant on the future of interaction design”, Bret, former Human-Interface inventor of Apple, critiques commonly used designs of future interfaces that simply is not visionary. He describes the problem behind the over-dependence of future interfaces on the screen, which he calls the “Pictures Under Glass”. Bret addresses the necessity of users to sacrifice all tactile richness when using a screen and emphasizes the necessity for it to be a transitional technology that must be moved on from. 

While reading this text, there were many connections between this text with another assigned text I am reading for the course “Communications and Technology”. The most recent reading from Dusek’s “Philosophy of Technology” introduces two conflicting ideas of the relationship between technology and culture – technological determinism, which claims “that technology causes or determines the structure of the rest of society and culture.”  and cultural determinism, which claims “that society has effects on the direction of our acceptance and rejection of technology”. It was clear from this reading that Bret is a firm believe of cultural determinism. This is especially evident when he discusses choice – “the most important thing about the future is that it’s a choice”. Here, he fully credits society and culture as the leading force of technology, not the other way around. 

This reading also reminded me of an experiment that I was involved in the summer term. I was asked to interact with a screen which had a tactile response to it. Specifically I was able to feel the vibrations of the zipper displayed on the screen when my fingers ran across it. My head was covered with a cap that picked up signals from my brain which were recorded. It was interesting that the technology of tactile response on screens which Bret emphasized greatly in this text was in the process of making. 

Bret followed up with another post addressing the response he got. One line that was interesting was “a tool for adults should take full advantage of the adult capabilities of both mind and body”. It showed that his target audience, at the time he wrote the post and when he worked in Apple, was the adult audience and he somehow expected the younger audience to adapt. It provided an insight into the target audience companies prioritizes when creating new technologies.